Christ, Our Passover

It is noteworthy the Holy Bible in 1 Cor. 5:7 describes Jesus Christ as “our Passover,” but never calls Him “our Easter.”

The Bible, which represents the God-breathed Word of God, would not have attributed such a description to Christ. Why? The Bible doesn’t consider Easter a biblical festival and it does not have roots in biblical history. Easter is simply a pagan-rooted festival, which began in the second century, more than a hundred-years after Christ’s ascension, and has nothing to do with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Saviour.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself; what does the Easter bunny, decorated eggs, young chickens and eating ham, an unclean meat, according to the dietary laws of Lev. 11, have to do with the sacrifice of our Saviour? Absolutely nothing! These practices associated with the sacrifice of Christ were long being used to honour pagan gods in their fertility celebrations. One of them was known as Eastre (Ishtarte), the Teutonic goddess of spring from whom many scholars agree Easter is derived.

Isn’t it interesting the symbol of an innocent Lamb, Jesus Christ, being led to the slaughter for the sins of humanity, is not represented in Christianity’s most solemn festival? Instead, bunnies and eggs replace “our Passover?”

All the biblical and secular evidence is there that the primitive church observed the Passover. The followers of Jesus, the apostles, and so many early followers, followed suit and the last living apostle, Polycarp, a student of the apostle John, had to defend the keeping of Passover.

Around 150 A.D., Polycarp journeyed to Rome to meet Anicetus, regarded in Catholic circles as the 11th Pope, to discuss various heresies and address the issue of not changing the Passover to Easter Sunday, which was already been observed in some areas. Polycarp held to his belief, which was taught from the apostle John, that the biblical practice all early followers of Christ knew and observed, was not Easter, but rather the Passover. These stalwarts of the faith knew nothing but Passover and its connection with the sacrifice of Jesus “once and for all,” “in the night He was betrayed” for the sins of humanity.

It was customary for the early Christians to celebrate the death of Jesus with a Pascha meal on the date of the Jewish Passover (1 Cor. 5:7-8), not Easter.

At first there was no annual celebration of the resurrection. Eventually, in the gentile world, the day of resurrection was added to the Pascha festival. That day was Sunday. At the Council of Nicea (325) it was ruled Easter Sunday would be celebrated on the Sunday immediately following that full moon which came after the vernal equinox. At the same time, the Council decided the vernal equinox would be March 21 in the Julian calendar (Eusebius, Vit. Const. 3.18). (Synder GF. Irish Jesus, Roman Jesus: the formation of early Irish Christianity. Trinity Press International, 2002, p. 183)

Secular history recorded this great blunder as they abandoned a biblical and God-ordained practice, embracing a pagan world’s religious practice with the backing of a powerful and influential Roman system. As God’s people approach the season of Passover, let us remind ourselves what we are doing.

Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” (1 Cor. 5:7-8).